Photo by Ger Horan
Natasha Carlitz Dance Ensemble presents
Natasha Carlitz Dance Ensemble: 20th Anniversary Celebration
September 11 & 12, 2026
Z Space’s Steindler Stage
Twenty years ago, the Natasha Carlitz Dance Ensemble launched itself into the Bay Area dance world in its inaugural performance with the internationally acclaimed California Guitar Trio, in a collaborative suite entitled Circulation. The beginning of that suite, featuring stretchy otherworldly tube-creatures, is one of several works NCDE is reviving for its 20th anniversary concert at Z Space. Audience favourite Off Your Rocker, with its playful children’s rocking props, also returns from 2006, along with an excerpt of Carlitz’s even earlier mathematical Linear Transformations. Adding to the colourful hijinks is a mash-up of the friendly bugs of Study in Entomology (2016) with the evolving symmetries of Kaleidoscope (2018).
It’s not all fun and games; the program’s more thoughtful side includes Tempus Fugit from 2008, set to a Beethoven violin concerto, which Carlitz choreographed during her father’s illness and later took to the Egyptian International Modern Dance Festival in 2010, and Missing, choreographed during the pandemic and set to Mozart. These pieces are leavened by Throughline (2018), with music commissioned from Italian guitarist Fabio Mittino, and Echo Lake (2015), a celebration of summer days in Maine, with music by the company’s Composer in Residence, Mike Coffin.
For the concert’s second half, the company premieres its new Chromatic Suite, a work for ten dancers with dizzying symmetries that form, break, and recombine, exploring processes both mechanical and mathematical. The Chromatic Suite grew out of a work from 2023, Chroma, whose vibrations and psychedelic geometry were inspired by "Planetary Folklore (Participations)" from 1969, a set of magnets designed by the “father of op art,” Victor Vasarely. Including both returning alumnae and new recruits in its cast, the new suite shows the company at the top of its game, with mind-boggling patterns spinning across the stage.
With its wide variety of themes and dancers from around the Bay Area, NCDE’s 20th Anniversary Celebration reminds dance enthusiasts old and young of the power of dance to convey emotion, spark new ideas, and bring sheer joy to dancers and audience alike.
Schedule
Friday, September 11, 8:00 pm
Saturday, September 12, 8:00 pm
